Amazon in talks with HTC about smartphone partnership

In a bid to release an Amazon smartphone, the e-commerce giant has been in contact with Taiwanese company HTC, to try and draw together a smartphone fitted with Fire OS and HTCs design aesthetic.

Amazon has had a partnership with Foxconn for their Kindle Fire tablets and used their own design principles, but for the smartphone they may look to HTC for the hardware schematics and focus on building a smaller version of Fire OS.

Reports say Amazon has been locked in talks since June this year with HTC about the smartphone and they have still to reach a decision, even though previous reports say Amazon will announce the phone sometime next month.

HTC has always been a company ready to try out new platforms, they were one of the first with Nokia to test out Windows Phone and became the only partner for the Facebook Home Android launcher, both have not fell in their favor.

Nobody quite knows what Amazon is planning with the smartphone, we may see something competitive in the high-end market with a low-end price or a new 3D smartphone with four retinal cameras and facial recognition, personalised to your eyes.

Whatever Amazon is preparing to do, we expect the killer feature here to be the price. Amazon has been known to extend far beyond the usual, offer free shipping for a full year for only $75 and putting the Kindle Fire into an iPad dominated market.

There is a report circulating that Amazon will offer this smartphone for a one-time price ($199/299) and the user has to sign up for a two year Amazon Prime membership, but this one comes with LTE, calls and texts benefits bundled.

This move would be huge for two reasons, one is a lot of people have Amazon Prime and would love a $199 smartphone and two is this would increase Amazon Prime members in the long term.